CONTROL LAW DESIGN FOR A THRUST VECTORING FIGHTER AIRCRAFT USING ROBUST INVERSE DYNAMICS ESTIMATION (RIDE)

Control laws have been designed for a high performance fighter aircraf t using robust inverse dynamics estimation (RIDE) with the aim of prov iding good control at high angles of attack. This necessitates the use of thrust vectoring in flight conditions where aerodynamic control su rfaces become ineffective. It is shown that the RIDE controller is abl e to transfer smoothly from using the aerodynamic surfaces to thrust v ectoring during post-stall manoeuvring. The RIDE controller is structu red so as to estimate the inverse dynamics of the aircraft and gives t he designer freedom to assign the dynamics of the controlled states. S imulation results demonstrate that RIDE provides a simple method for t he design of control laws which give specified response characteristic s across the flight envelope and are robust to plant variations.